UAE's first historic launch to Mars

The United Arab Emirates' (UAE) launches its first mission, the Hope probe, to Mars.

After two previous attempts to launch the probe were cancelled because of weather conditions, the probe had a successful lift-off from Tanegashima spaceport in Japan.

Overseen by American experts, the UAE engineers of the craft were able to produce it in just six years.

The craft is now on a 500 million km journey to observe the second-smallest planet in our Solar System.

The primary mission of the satellite is to study how energy moves within Mars' atmosphere, throughout the day and the annual seasons. The probe will investigate the factors responsible for the loss of water on the planet, which it clearly had before, as well as tracking lofted dust which influences temperature on Mars.

This launch is one of three of the UAE's missions to Mars in this month alone.

While the UAE has limited experience in the manufacture and design of space vehicles, they join a select few countries to have achieved the same goal, including Russia, the US and India.

But missions to Mars are no fair feat, around half of all missions sent to the planet have failed either from a launch failure or an error occurring on the trip to the Red Planet.